The Girls of Madison
...is... Synopsis We need a montage... Team America jokes aside, a lot of establishing shots of the town of Madison and the Madison Center flood the screen for a few minutes, as well as Najwa and other girls commenting on a new arrival. They debate whether she's black or Mexican, and Heidi informs audiences that it'll be far from fun times for her regardless. Another girl can be heard complaining to staff about others irritating her; vowing to go all pencil-stab-happy like the alien hordes in a scene in The Faculty if she's pushed too much further. Najwa is up first, asked about the daily routine. She essentially states that after waking up, girls get a shower, then get fed breakfast. The shower stalls look fairly standard for a college campus, or for the gym showers of a poorly-funded inner-city high school built in the early 2000s. Brianna is shown eating what looks more like a lunch menu at the worst inner-city school cafeteria ever. It's essentially the same as a mid-semester food menu at a college campus cafeteria in the mid-2000s, when the students are stuck with whatever they've got and there are no parents around that the school needs to impress, and the only alternative is to walk to McDonald's or KFC (which are even less healthy.) Only, they sometimes eat out of styrofoam trays. So forget about microwaving if your food gets cool. Brianna's green plastic tray is demonstrated as having Gordon Food Service-quality mashed potatoes and gravy on top of a slice of turkey or pork that looks like it was stolen from a Swanson Hungry Man package. She has peas and cornmeal next to it, and what looks like low-quality rice covered with a pasteurized cheese product that fails to meet even Velveeta's standards. One other item that's fairly nondescript in the shot is apparently a cake of some sort - if it were whipped together last minute by a lazy baker at the local Wal-Mart. Since the girls are up by 7 to eat and class is at 8 and goes until 3:30, it makes sense to give them a high-protein meal. After all: if they were like civilians scrimping by and eating cereals with paint thinner as a preservative and covered in cinnamon and sugar, their blood sugar levels would take a nosedive before Ramos could finish class. Can't have sleepy prisoners in a math class, can we? Ramos is shown teaching the girls a 2-D graph of axes, with a linear slope graph of descending y values and ascending x values. The exact y vs. x value equation is hard to discern from that distance, and the shot goes by too fast for the casual viewer to even discern anything meaningful from the dry erase board. (Thanks, editors!) After classes, the girls get gym time - and are then allowed a little time in the day room to hang out, before they have to eat dinner, attend meetings, and then get ready for bed to begin the cycle all over again. Taryn chimes in that backbiting and gossip are a normal part of the culture there, and that it's hard to not get sucked in. In other words, 4Chan meets Facebook meets Twitter meets DeviantArt...on crack. Sprinkled with some Tumblr for good measure. Surprised? Najwa also chimes in that drama queens make her sick. But there's no avoiding them. Brianna finally admits that if not for Madison, she'd "probably be dead." Meet Galipeau John Galipeau, the superintendent, is shown driving to work. He tells the film crew that he's been working with kids "for close to 20 years," and enjoys it. Which makes his sudden departure from LaPorte after season 2 quite a shock. But that's neither here nor there for this episode. He elaborates on what kind of girls he gets to oversee. From every nook and cranny of the state. Charges of drug possession, armed robbery, robbery, breaking and entering, aggravated assault, and weapons charges. Trying to explain classified federal-level toys to local authorities to avoid arson charges or or accidental poisoning of a million-dollar dog are not on his list, but why rule anything out? These girls have done a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and...that's enough Michelle Branch and Carlos Santana for one session. John continues that the girls are usually there to complete "a program," as opposed to being pre-assigned a definitive number of months or years of sentence to serve. Programs include a standard education, mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, etc. Galipeau talks about the Promise High School, and how it ranks with other juvenile centers in Indiana on all the criteria that the state sets forward. Madison under his tutelage consistently out-performs the other centers. Which raises valid questions about why the regular schools are trailing so far behind a random prison, and are arguably more dangerous places for children to be. But...that's enough redpilling for now, Mr. Anderson... ''Dead Inside: Weak'' Volleyball These girls don't speak Japanese, nor do they play all that well. But volleyball is the happening sport in Unit 6. Don't expect a video game adaptation any time soon. Even if a Madison-themed video game does sound like a radical and possibly cool idea. But as long as the simulators keep looking like Prison Architect or Prison Tycoon...not happening. We're introduced to Brianna Guerra, who arrived in January of 2017. Other girls make one thing clear about Bri: no filter. If she has something to say, ambiguity of intent becomes a rare hidden gem beneath a pile of rocks you have to chip away at feverishly, like Daniel Plainview. Frazer attempts to plug Bri's future YouTube channel, "Thug Princess," but he gets the words backwards. He mentions her propensity to run her mouth, a main source of problems for her. According to Bri, a major source of her angry outbursts and thug attitude stem from inability to cope with parental abandonment. Absent weasel for a father = angry girl. Got it. She went full hood, engaging in armed muggings and even a high-speed police chase, thinking she was OJ Simpson. Drugs were involved, "of course!" She gets defensive about her sense of identity, saying she doesn't want to change her personality solely due to a desire to appease someone else. That she lacks anything positive or worthwhile to wrap an identity around is the point she seems to be missing. How Nutty are they? Brianna is careless with her Nutty Buddy bar, and a friend of hers eats it. That's considered "trafficking," and Lewis writes Bri up for it. Bri thinks that's outrageous. Candy bars are crack, apparently. Brianna explains that the staff - who are supposed to be shining examples of role model behavior for the kids - are often anything to the contrary. "Vain, childish, and petty," she states. Various clips in later episodes seem to confirm her suspicions, that not all staff are up to par with standards for staff behavior. Elsewhere, the Madison Courier had articles about staff that were fired and charged for sexual misconduct involving the girls, so this is entirely believable.[http://fav.me/dcmmcae Drop-In: The Real and Fictional Monster of Madison] Bri does herself no favors, however, by referring to Lewis as "Humpty Dumpty." She sets herself up to have a big fall, if anything. Edrington and Lewis begin discussing in whispers about turning Bri over to Minnick, but are loud enough that Bri can overhear. Bri calls them out with her equivalent of "you know I can hear you, right?" Edrington retaliates by telling Bri to follow her into the hallway "to discuss it." See, it turns out that the students are apparently not allowed to learn sign language. So passing notes is the only way to communicate certain sensitive information. Except, passing notes isn't allowed either. In fact, in the Centipede and Fire Saga, Nancy has to play "pass the potato" with her spec notes between a security officer and the other Last Legs girls just to let Candi see her renders for the Forfica Mk. I Ciem suit, because passing the sketchpad directly to Candi would have constituted "passing notes" directly among students. Strange rules, but they are in a prison. Passing love letters could just as easily be passing on sketches for a superhero costume - or blueprints to where dangerous stuff is kept on campus. You can never be too careful. Lewis decides to circle around the girls like a vulture, and discovers a note that a girl wrote to Bri in Bri's cell. Suddenly, Bri finds herself engulfed in write-ups and conduct reports. She points out to Edrington that the letter contains perfectly harmless information, and feels the staff are picking on her. She tells Edrington that she thinks Lewis is a jerk; but gets a reply back of: "We're just following orders." She should probably re-watch A New Hope, if she thinks she's surrounded by Imperial Storm Troopers. Han Solo at least knew how to keep them suckered for a few minutes. Bri...sabotages herself with one indiscretion after another. Another officer can be heard on comms stating she has "three J3s" to report Unit 6 "to the back of the room." No effort is put forward to explain what a "J3" is. Unit what, now? Galipeau explains that there are six housing units for the juvenile section of campus. However, the buildings 1-3 have since become special. General population, due to dwindling enrollment numbers, are now down to only buildings 5 and 6. Girls are locked in cells 1 or 2 girls at a time to a cell. They don't scrunch everyone together in a giant room, like in some facilities. In season 2, it'd be the exact opposite housing situation. Just call an electrician already! It's almost the end of another school day; and around 3:45 PM on a Wednesday, it's time for Community Meetings. The girls head into the library around 3:30, as can be evidenced by a clock in the background if anyone looks at the screen very carefully and squints. According to Heidi, this is where Galipeau learns from the girls if they are lacking anything essential. Aubrey alerts Galipeau that her unit's showers have inoperative ventilation systems, leading to it getting harder and harder to breathe whenever the girls attempt to take showers. She struggles to specify the vents, saying the "fan" isn't working. "Inoperative ventilation" are apparently two words not in Aubrey's vocabulary. Galipeau gets very confused by this. Honor Squad Next, Galipeau introduces audiences to the Honor Squad system implemented in 2016, whereby which girls who performed exceptionally well in their school grades and general behavior were rewarded with wearing a burgundy shirt. This was in contrast to the standard indigo - that was just 19 leftward hue steps and 47 leftward luminescence steps in a Photoshop HSL image tweaker tool away from resembling the navy blue hue of a standard post-2015 Meijer employee polo shirt (and lacking the cool badge, obviously.) Rayes is rewarded with a burgundy shirt. The girls inform camera crews that while they may get one for incredible performance, maintaining a burgundy status is highly difficult. Most girls screw up and lose theirs within two weeks. Hothead Herself Next up, the crew give us a look into Chrissy Hutchinson - a gangbanger wannabe that had been at Madison for over two years. She had become really good at going through the motions and telling the staff what they wanted to hear - realizing that this was the only way she would ever get the chance to go back to gangbanging ever again. One would hope she'd learned something after two years at the place! Even the big-talking Bri, however, could tell that there was something definitely not right with Chrissy. Miss Put-on-a-Show to Impress the Guards was very different when no one was over her shoulder, and Bri had seen enough of the real Chrissy to know a rotten egg when she saw one. Bri liked to put on a show; but even Big Bad Bri had limits. And Chrissy...was another story. Aubrey chimes in that Chrissy can be sweet...when she chooses to be. However, Frazer injects that it doesn't take much to get Chrissy angry. And when she does blow up...it's atomic. Putting the cart before the horse, Sarah reasons that being at Madison for two years made Chrissy "go crazy." More likely, being that crazy to begin with ensured Chrissy had to be there that long, but same end result either way. A cliche if ever there were one; Chrissy got led astray in the beginning because of her wayward father. Her mom was a nerd who fell for a thug, long story short. Chrissy wondered what was such a big deal on the streets, that her dad would choose that over her. And...got sucked into the underworld very quickly. She'd start fights and sell drugs just because. She smoked the Devil's weed until she became a conscience-devoid sociopath. Breaking into cars and home invasion were of no consequence to her. She was even facing battery charges. Because beating others to a pulp because you could became fun in her eyes. Police tried house arrest; but she would cut her bracelet like a complete moron and escape. As opposed to hacking the bracelet. Or, you know, getting a decent hobby, like Shia LaBeouf had to in Disturbia. (Heck, even Ant-Man found a smarter solution, and that second film was littered with complete nonsense!) An interview from January of 2015 had Chrissy writing off her fate as "well, I guess maybe God is trying to tell me something, but whatever." Minnick shows off Chrissy's pile of paperwork over two years' time: victim empathy worksheets, family relations worksheets, anger management worksheets, and probably more worksheets than anyone cares to say "worksheet" for outside of [[w:c:robotchicken:Robocop Teaches DARE|a bad RoboCop parody in an episode of]] Robot Chicken."Catdog on a Stick." (episode.) RobotChicken. Stoop!d Monkey. June 15th, 2014. Galipeau refers to her as "having a very tough outer shell." But once you crack it, "she's not such a monster underneath." A pity the streets interpreted that as: "vhee needz to staht over, vahnd givz her an even hahder shell!" But...that's for later. Crawley, unlike a lot of the others, sees through the horsehockey. Chrissy did "the bare minimal," according to Crawley, to bump up her social status by getting the burgundy. However, Chrissy then "immediately went out of her way to lose it." She was supposed to report for demotion; but went into another room to draw a picture and resist. Crawley confronted her on this in the day room, and Chrissy threw out every single excuse she could think of to not cooperate. A failure to communicate Faith Holbert tries to convince Chrissy to cooperate and not be stupid. But stupid won out that day. Chrissy got herself put in MAC, the solitary cells unit. She put up a Cool Hand Luke-style la résistance...over a shirt! And set the wrong example for other girls by doing so. This could not be tolerated. Despite Crawley's own shortcomings elsewhere, cracking down hard on Chrissy here proved to be the right move. Unfortunately...getting the situation under control led to staff concluding that the film crew would be in the way. They'd have to come back tomorrow. The staff especially didn't want anyone to see Chrissy's meltdown - which included her throwing things like a four-year-old throwing a tantrum. Or a Hillary supporter when someone with a MAGA hat walks into their store to buy vape. (But now we digress.) Again, this was over a shirt. And a slice from Pizza Hut that she'd no longer get. A possible justification for chain gangs in Indiana? Possible. But...that didn't happen. Still, t'would have been a fitting fate for Miss Burgundy Wannabe. She was a total...Pretender (cue Roger Daltrey screaming "Yeeeaaaaaahhh!!!!") Bri comes to the crew's rescue by explaining the sanctions that girls can get. "In the end, the house always wins." The chain gang part may have been an exaggeration; but there are tan outfits for girls to wear when doing yardwork. A montage shows various girls cleaning up the place. Because we always need a montage for something or another. You do too much, you're not Supergirl Faith starts discussing a time when she got pepper sprayed. Aubrey mentions a Barnhardt spraying her too. Aubrey began her journey by believing she could punch her way out of every problem. Upon arrival, in her own admission, she fought another girl right off the bat. And then, she fought two different staff members! Not an authorized play-wrestle or kung-fu fight, not training, just starting random brawls. Scar tissue that you wish you saw optional. Every time someone gets called out for instigating a brawl, that said called out gets four weeks added to her sentence woofta-poofta! And just like that, Aubrey would have to stay a quarter of a year longer! However, some sheets and staff defend her by saying that she's progressed quite a bit in her nine months of stay. Brianna further proclaims faith that Aubrey "will be just fine." Might wanna check that crystal ball again... Galipeau argues that Aubrey "did all the paperwork" asked of her regarding overcoming substance abuse. It'd be up to Aubrey "to apply it outside." She shows the crew her lengthy paperwork, which she had to finish or else she "couldn't leave." Most of it had to do with the drugs she was obsessed with experimenting with. She is at her most honest when admitting to her fears of what faces her outside - namely, that she will face numerous temptations to slip back into her old drug habits. Aubrey is then shown going to Minnick's office for update time, citing Minnick as her prime motivation for wanting to change who she is inside. Aubrey mentions her desire to want to help out the less fortunate, which Minnick declares a good thing - in spite not knowing that Aubrey still hasn't deduced how to be a particularly smart Good Samaritan. The negligence of this fine detail would prove Aubrey's undoing in another episode, as her upcoming failure to save a friend in need would drive her right back into despair - and then, into drugs, and then, into prison for drug use. Moving on, Aubrey discusses her mother's obsession with drug use - and how it led to her mother's association with bad crowds. Ergo, a mother-daughter generational cycle of drug abuse leading to a loser mom in and out of halfway houses and a delinquent daughter having to live with the grandparents. Her father? For all we know, probably either dead or in prison. Probably wouldn't help her to imagine he's a cyborg after falling into a volcano. But at least it'd make him sound more awesome. Anyway, Minnick inquires as to why Aubrey feels compelled to be a hellion. She cites that her mother's personal failing at life is what continues to lead her astray. The day of Aubrey's arrest corresponded to one day after her mom went to jail for drug abuse. She cites that she needs to "have a support system" and learn to "fall back on it," rather than trying to tackle every problem in the world herself as though she were Supergirl. (Especially given that she's the farthest thing from it.) Minnick suggests that Aubrey read, write, or call someone if frustrated. Except...her notepads get confiscated at home if she isn't tidy with them. Same with her books. And they take issue with her phone use. As for "falling back" on a support system...if someone she cares about is in danger - like Brienna - her family really can't be bothered with "someone else's problems." So just one episode later, we learn that Aubrey is immediately made to feel like if she wants something done; she's gotta be the one to do it - alone, her way. Which...almost never ends well. After another montage (that fails to fade out properly) of a night-to-day cycle, we see Aubrey reading a really beaten up and possibly outdated book of Indiana-approved Prentice Hall United States History: From Reconstruction to the "Present". This Heidi isn't from the mountains Meanwhile, Heidi Lakin starts spouting conspiracy theories for fun - namely, that JFK orchestrated the death of Marylin Monroe. She also claims that the CIA assassinated a man in India for having found a cure for cancer, and that they then destroyed it because population control or something. (Her latter theory sounds plausible though.) According to Najwa, Heidi is "adorable" (But not in the meme sense) and very funny. Another girl concurs that Heidi had some common ground with a certain Limp Bizkit song. Several security personnel cite that Heidi can be fun to be around - until you cross her. Betray her trust, and it's Vengeance City! Nothing is off limits! Brianna complains that Heidi once spit in a friend's lotion - just to make a point! You know a girl's got issues when Thug Princess herself comes out and says: "You go too far!" In Heidi's own words, she felt she had to prove how tough she was upon arrival, for fear that she'd get shanked or something if she didn't prove herself tough. Her understanding of Madison at the time was that it was "full of murderers," and that she'd wind up on the chopping block before one of them. To her surprise, the only girl there that had actually killed someone was Taryn (although, the civil engineers and surveyors of Potter Shop Road are as much to blame for that incident. But...that's getting technical.) Heidi's fear of winding up dead subsided slightly upon realizing that Taryn is surprisingly well-behaved. A choppily-edited clip shows Heidi walking past a bunch of girls and chewing them out for seemingly no reason, threatening to "spaz" on them. A guard yells at her to knock it off. Again...context needed. Galipeau confirms that Heidi would be a lot better off if she'd just stop getting the urge to fight everyone all the time. She confirmed that the last straw leading to her winding up in Madison involved a case of grand theft auto. She and some other girls jumped a young boy who'd only recently gotten himself a car - just because they could. They took it on a joyride after beating the boy senseless and rearranging his face. Purely for the sick amusement they got from doing so. She should be thankful she doesn't live in the Gerosha universe. Extirpon would have retaliated by rearranging [[w:c:allthetropes:Mind Rape|her mind]] - in a much more gloriously over-the-top fashion too! Why? Because he'd find it cathartic. Her big excuse at the end? They were drunk. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Kids, don't drink and carjack! Heidi got lucky! How to (maybe) win friends and misuse ventilation Heidi decides to fill in viewers on what the place does on a typical Wednesday. It's very common, she explains, for girls to act up whenever there are new intakes. The girls are just as cliquey in prison as they are in high school. (Really not that surprising!) Competitions ensue on the units for who can win over the coolest of the new kids on the block to their clique - having a bunch of hits and hating Chinese food LFO-style optional. So how to meet somebody new Madison-style? Apparently, the vents double as phones or something. Girls with experience being at Madison are kept on the top unit floors, whereas the bottom floors are often used for new intakes. So by chatting through the vents like bored Ferris State freshmen in a McNerney Hall fall semester, the girls try to learn who they're about to get as a new in-house bit of company. That's when Heidi meets Paige, the Duchess of Duckface on Instagram (Brianna being the queen. Though...these titles don't hold for long, as every teeny-bopper on that site feels an insane compulsion to play Queen of the Duckface Mountain.) Heidi is already convinced that "Loudmouth" and herself won't get along. It'd be a duel of Largemouth Sass versus Loudmouth Crass, if we're going by Heidi logic. Whoever taught these girls that running their mouths and being ghetto about it was cool? That bum needs to feed the fish! Where's a millstone when you need one? We're finally treated to the girls flaunting how "tough girl" they can look...while brushing their teeth. "You're adorable." - Dan Ewing, who made sucking a lollipop look like smoking a Camel in the pilot episode of Power Rangers RPM, instantly pissing off the Disney execs. Guerra War No, not Guerilla War, which was a really cool game for MS-DOS back in the day. This is Brianna Guerra's Start of Darkness origin story. There once was a sweet little thing-a-ma-bob named Brianna. That is, until her parents tried to get her into a prep school. "It'll be the best thing for her, like, ever!" said the naive and well-meaning every-parent. Cue her actually arriving. Preppies are mean. Preppies can be monsters. They're just smarter about it than ghetto chicks. If you don't have the Spirit, but you have a big head and education, all it makes you is a clever devil! Somehow, most adults still haven't figured that out! Or, they reason: "But-but-but...muh kid! It won't happen to muh kid!" And then it does. Almost. Every. Time. It didn't take Bri very long to finally snap. She defaulted to the ghetto - the only thing she knew. And started teaching a few of those prissies what happens when you bully a dragon. Naturally, the teachers couldn't see the bullying happening right in front of them, because most teachers are completely dense to that sort of thing. The only thing they did see, was when Bri retaliated. Because they are taught to have psychic laser vision to retaliatory acts -and immediately reinterpret it as being done for no reason. Because any other explanation leads to Input error. NPCs as educators...dangerous in their own right. After routinely failing to get justice in her war on mean girls, Bri reached the "Fine. I don't care anymore!" stage of depression, and began acting out by skipping class until she got expelled. She began running off and doing as she pleased on the streets. While not really a druggie type, she wouldn't hesitate to brawl if someone provoked her. She confessed to loving the thrill of beating someone into submission. Getting over that need to beat faces in, run away from home, take class work seriously, etc., became the challenges that led to her winding up in Madison. Where the girls were still obnoxious, but at least they weren't evil preppies. Other segments Content pending. Featured cast Emphasized inmates Staff featuring Guest stars Music Trivia * In the Centipede and Fire Saga, James Galloper (the Galipeau analog) developed the idea of the burgundy shirts for the honor squad in Ciem: Ash Cloud. Yet, Bruce Almin (a merger of Michael Caine with Tim Greathouse) was the one who implements it first in 2016. ** Candi only doesn't qualify for it due to outside interference from SCALLOP director Darius Philippine, who has it denied to her out of spite - and so her release date wouldn't get moved up, ever. Under the Kirby Act, SCALLOP determined how many times Candi had to repeat her program before it "counted," and she would be considered "release-worthy." ** While angry at Darius reneging on his promise to leave her family alone if she agreed to go to Madison and take the fall for all those other parties' incompetence regarding what happened in Gerosha (Boonville) in 2015, Candi cooperates with her release date being tampered with and her achievements disregarded for only two reasons: *** 1) In order to oversee the Last Legs operation to maturity and have a safe base to operate her Ciem operation from (as Almin was very supportive of Candi's Ciem operation); and *** 2) to avoid having to re-enroll at Gerosha High School for as long as possible. **** This is because while Candi didn't love staying at Madison, she much preferred it to Gerosha High. Unlike the real-life Boonville High School, Gerosha High's new board of education had turned the school into "a hellhole," according to some students. By her reasoning, Madison was "not great; but still a dramatic improvement" over her former regular high school. Her fellow student body at Madison were "just dumb and angry; but not driven psychotic by kook fringe left-wing politics," as was her understanding of Gerosha High. ** As such, it can be said that making Almin central to the narrative of Ciem: Ash Cloud before knowing about when Galipeau took over for Greathouse created some considerable friction in aligning the story's world and continuity with real MJCF history. Galloper / Galipeau is, however, correctly identified in the 2018 timeline of The Gerosha Chronicles post-''Ciem: Caldera'' as being the warden of LaPorte. However, Candi is shown to have been released in late January of 2018 to live with the Trenson family in Gerosha - who have adopted her. Thus, Galloper / Galipeau becomes mostly irrelevant to Candi's life story in 2018 afterward. He is never mentioned in the Sodality: Instigation flashbacks, as Candi bonded with Almin instead - who has since retired post-''Caldera''. References See also * Season 1 * The Girls of LaPorte Category:Season 1 episodes